A tribunal has ordered a British Columbia accountant to pay more than $2,600 to her former employer after tracking software showed she engaged in “time theft” while working from home.
The judgment issued this week by the Civil Resolution Tribunal shows the woman claimed $5,000 to cover unpaid wages and severance pay, arguing she was fired last March without cause Was.
But the employer, Reach CPA Inc. presented a counterclaim with evidence showing a 50-hour discrepancy between her timesheet and the activity as recorded by the tracking software on her work computer.
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The decision shows the woman started working remotely in October 2021 and Reich installed software called TimeCamp on her laptop four months later, shortly after which she and her manager met to discuss her performance. meet.
The tribunal says Reich compared the woman’s timesheet with data from the software over a month between late February and March and found she claimed 50 hours during which it appeared she was not working. Was.
The ruling ordered her to pay up to $2,603 in interest and damages for theft of time on the loan and an outstanding portion of the advance that the company gave her for home office equipment and educational fees, along with a $125 fee to the tribunal. With.
The woman told the tribunal she could not explain the 50 hours that had not been accounted for as she did not fully understand how to use the software.
But Megan Stewart, a member of the tribunal, found that didn’t matter because the program automatically tracked the difference between her work and personal activities.
“Theft of time is viewed as a very serious form of misconduct in the context of employment,” said the ruling issued Wednesday.
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It says that trust and honesty are essential to an employment relationship, especially in remote work environments.
The woman’s misconduct caused “an irreparable break in her employment relationship with Reich,” Stewart says in the decision, adding that “dismissal was proportionate to the circumstances.”
The woman also told the tribunal that she spent time working with hard copies, which TimeCamp would not have captured, the decision notes, but Reich submitted data showing how much time she spent printing, which she Couldn’t print the large quantities of documents it needed. ,
Even if she was working with hard copies, Stewart found no evidence that the woman uploaded her work to the company’s electronic systems or otherwise demonstrated that she worked in connection with the 50 hours. spent any significant amount of time completing tasks related to for.
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